BOURKE

Aboriginal art and cultural history live side by side with explorers, inventors, pioneers and poets in the very soil of the Back O' Bourke. All history lives somewhere, and the history of the Australian bush lives, and can still be found, in Bourke. Great exploration expeditions punctuate European history in the region. Captain Charles Sturt and Sir Thomas Mitchell traversed the country to the site of Bourke itself, and the famously ill-fated expedition of Burke and Wills trod its tragic path through the back blocks of the region. Captain Charles Sturt was the first white explorer to encounter the river in 1828 and named it the Darling River after NSW Governor Ralph Darling. In 1835 settlement of Bourke began by colonial surveyor and explorer Sir Thomas Mitchell who built a small stockade that he named Fort Bourke after the then Governor Richard Bourke. This first structure became the foundation for a fledgling community with a small number of agricultural and livestock farms established in the region shortly after. With exploration came opportunity, a new kind of adventurous spirit filtered into western New South Wales, with adventurers eager for fortune and fame. Sir Sidney Kidman and Sir Samuel Mccaughey were just two of the great pastoral barons to stake their claim in and around Bourke and use its landscapes as a hinge point for their respective empires. When Australia sought to articulate its identity in the late 19th century, the writers of the day rushed to the Back O' Bourke to define the collective psyche of the land. In Bourke, authors like C.E.W Bean and Henry Lawson found the kind of men that fit the mold of frontier mateship, which Bean went on to codify in the ANZACS of WW1, while Lawson famously quipped, "If you know Bourke, you know Australia". The Back O' Bourke overlays the traditional lands of four major nations. The Ngemba (Ngiyaampa) are the traditional custodians of the land on which the township of Bourke sits. Known as 'stone country people', the Ngemba cared for some of the most significant sites in the region. The Baakindji (Barkandji), one of the largest recognised groups in western NSW, are the traditional custodians of the lands northwest of the Darling-Baaka. Their name roughly translates as 'people belonging to the Baaka'. Their country extends almost the length of the Darling-Baaka, from the confluence of the Warrego River (Toorale National Park), right down to the Murray River. Campfires on claypans, scarred trees and middens can be found throughout the floodplains as evidence of their enduring occupation. In the northeast, the Murrawarri are the traditional custodians, and in the northwest are the traditional lands of the Kunya. These lands are punctuated by the Culgoa and Warrego Rivers, the Cuttaburra Basin and the Ledknapper. The story of Australian Aboriginal people can be conveyed no better than through the Back O' Bourke people. Bourke was formerly the largest inland port in the world for exporting wool on the Darling River. The Bourke Court HOuse is unique in inland Australia in that it was originally a maritime court and to this day maintains that distinction. The distinction is evident in the crowns that sit above the flag poles atop the corner parapets of the building. The countryside around Bourke is used mainly for sheep farming, goats, cattle and cotton. A trip to the Back O' Bourke Information and Exhibition Centre will take you back in time through the extensive history of the Bourke region.